In conventional systems dealing with vibration, the focus is on vibration isolation of equipment, or vibration control of structures. Such isolation systems generally have very low effective stiffness in the direction of the damping, or conversely relatively modest damping for high stiffness structures. Currently, it is challenging, or not possible in some instances, to create systems that efficiently combine high stiffness and high damping. Furthermore, conventional low stiffness isolation systems are not practical if there are weight and volume requirements, or when scalability is required to allow integration into other materials and structures.
Some new systems employ solid state damping materials such as piezoelectric and magnetostrictive materials. While these damping materials efficiently maintain the structural stiffness, they are usually costly, heavy, and brittle. Other prior systems do not posses sufficient control over microstructures to achieve high stiffness and damping over a wide, controlled set of operating conditions.
What is needed is an efficient shock absorber and vibration damper that has superior damping performance, scalable manufacturing, light-weight design, and good structural strength. What is also needed is a lighter weight, more controllable shock absorber/vibration damper that works over a broad range of temperatures and strain spaces. Further, what is needed is the capability to create engineered responses to application loads that can be designed optimally for a variety of loading situations. What is needed in some applications is a structure that is capable of high stiffness in the direction of damping.